Libertarians are used to wandering in the wilderness like political nomads. We know we’ll be called upon from time to time to act as tour guides in order to lead the Republican leadership towards some safe small-government oasis or waterhole of individual liberty. We don’t even need maps or compasses, as the routes are permanently etched within our minds. Being tough and hearty political travelers, another forty years in the wilderness doesn’t scare us all that much. […]

Without enough allies to fight the Democrats or even the skills to find the path to small government and individual freedom, the current Republican leadership may not be destined to forty years in the wilderness. Without libertarian assistance, they may not even make it to the next oasis.
With or without the GOP, libertarians will somehow survive. Can the GOP survive without libertarians?

While I included criticism of libertarians from folks like Mike Huckabee and Lindsey Graham in the posting, I didn’t expect to see Michael Medved style insults thrown into the comment section. Here are a few gems:

Despite having bad things to say about him, I agree with the Huckster about the “heartless, callous, soulless” bit. Please accept the fact that we aren’t going to ever become a libertarian paradise like Somalia, and move on.

Libertarian bashing is deserved, long overdue. They need it!

Here’s the real GOP deal for LibbieLoons… if you agree with the Party’s core principles on smaller govt, lower taxes, strong natl defense and JackKemp’s Opportunity Society, come on board! If you don’t and –like RonPaul– want to abdicate the Free World to the IslamoFascists, then take a hike or return to that land of electoral wonders and political groundswells (not), the LibbieLoon party.

GOP needs to put a boot to the disloyal, back-stabbing LibbieLoons and send em packing –not make the GOP over into LibbieLoonLand Part Deux.

I’m surprised you didn’t get the memo… it was sent to the LibbieLoon headquarters

Does this mean that the bloggers on thenextright.com will stop calling libertarians “libtards”?

lib-tards … is an insult to LIBERALS. If you want to insult Libertarians, you call em Loser-tarians or something like that.

call them what they really are: LibbieLoon-atics.

Oh… and they have to hog-tie BobBarr and DOCTORCrazyUncleRon together and parade them through the town square as our newest VillageIdiots.

It’s why no one deserves the LibbieLoons and the GOP sure as heck doesn’t need ‘em.

“Losertarian” is getting pretty stale and I’m getting a bit burned out on “libtard.” LibbieLoon seems a welcome addition to the invectives being tossed about by folks obviously incapable of reason.

Comedy is hard. Really, really hard. Funny requires stepping outside the box — saying something a bit unexpected. There are a lot of ways to screw it up, and often what sounds funny in your head is not so funny when a listener hears it. There’s a reason why many actors say that comedy acting is a lot harder than drama acting.

Comedy and politics is even more difficult, because you have a pretty significant group of people just salivating over the chance to vilify and embarrass you if what you say is at the least bit unfunny.

Gergen: “They still haven’t found their voice, Anderson. This happens to a minority party after it’s lost a couple of bad elections, but they’re searching for their voice.”

Cooper: “It’s hard to talk when you’re teabagging.”

There are a lot of reasons why that’s funny, but key is that Mr Highbrow Serious Reporter-man Anderson Cooper went for a scrotum joke. If Bill Maher or Jon Stewart said it, it would be expected and might get a chuckle. To see that from Anderson Cooper, though, is priceless. And he deadpans it! It would be too easy to try to play it up, to try to emphasize the line. If it were Rachel Maddow, she’d have said it with that annoying smirk and ruined the joke.

You are a real piece of work. Keep drinking the Kool-aid. Do you even know what you are speaking about? Apparently you enjoy your drugs and despise anyone who would delay your supply from reaching. That is the only logical reason why you would come to the defense of a drug runner. And a drug runner who used the border pass given to him by our government to make a delivery. Sir, you are an Ass.

Comment by Tim Martinez — May 19, 2009 @ 6:09 am

I would try to respond but I’m way too busy drinking the Kool-aid and being a stoned ass.

But perhaps I spoke too soon. Yes, California voters are more than willing to vote for huge spending to be financed by bonds. That’s a big problem, if the spending (and thus the bonds) occur. But if Tim Cavanaugh of Reason is correct, it’s not the problem I once thought. Why not? The state isn’t spending the money:

One favorite trick for avoiding disaster at the level of state budgets is to keep authorized expenditures cooped up by never writing the checks. This practice can go on for years or decades, depending on the lobbying power of the people who stand to gain from the spending. A former California budget director once set my mind at ease when I asked about the hundreds of billions of dollars in bonded debt the ballot-initiative mobocracy has committed the state to. It turned out that only a small portion of those bonds had been issued. (And it’s pretty stunning to consider that the Golden State’s fiscal self-destruction would be even worse if anybody took an interest in honoring the will of the voters.)

So, that is good one one front. The state has shielded us from some of the stupidity inherent in democracy.

But there’s another worse aspect. The state has spent us into oblivion even without the voters’ help! I used to think it was a competition between idiotic direct democracy voters and idiotic gerrymandered politicos in an effort to bankrupt the state. It turns out I was wrong — the politicos want to hoard all the “glory” for themselves!

On this website, we have a category called “Dumbasses & Authoritarians” that is a grab bag of stories about really dumb or vicious government officials. Typically, the posts that are assigned to that category detail some government official who is making everything worse via his actions. No, not every post gets assigned to that category, just the actually egregious stuff.

When you read one of those posts, what emotion do you feel? Typically, people feel anger or outrage. Odds are that you have fantasized about slapping one of those jerks about, screaming at him, or squeezing his neck until your pain stops. This desire to punish these people is understandable but counterproductive, because there is little chance of convincing a government official of the error of his ways by calling him things like ‘traitor’, ‘moron’, ‘toady’ etc.

I would like to bring to your attention information related to the case of Sam Dodson.

As you are probably aware, Mr. Dodson has been held as “John Doe” in Cheshire County Department of Corrections for the past 4 weeks. Per your order, he will remain there indefinitely unless he consents to give his name and address. During this time Mr. Dodson has been on a hunger strike in order to gain sympathy and publicity for his cause. He has lost 20 lbs.

It is my understanding that the Department of Corrections knows his legal name and address.

It is difficult to predict the time it takes to die from starvation, but a reasonable estimate based on Mr. Dodson’s situation shows a 50% chance that he will die within the next week, rising to near certainty about 4 weeks from now.

What you probably do not know is that in the intervening weeks there has been a growing tide of sympathy for Mr. Dodson’s situation. Initially blog posts and opinion articles with an immature tone, these have matured into a full-fledged campaign of sympathy for the plight of what I believe to be an innocent man. To take one example, Mr. Dodson’s supporters recently sent a well-worded press release to over 500 (!) news organizations around the country. Blog posts and articles are now numerous on the web.

If Mr. Dodson should die in jail, every aspect of the case will be brought out for public inspection, including his original charges, your court orders, and the jail house conditions that led to his death.

I understand that people should show proper judicial respect, but Mr. Dodson’s case appears to be a point of pride with vanishingly small value.

I urge you to consider whether it would be better to concede the point, and in so doing let the matter slowly dissipate.

Note the calm appeal to the judge’s humanity, the appeals to his self interest, and the acknowledgment of why the judge has thrown Sam into jail indefinitely. Nor does it sacrifice principle. It is an attempt to open a negotiation that is to the benefit of the judge, Sam Dodson and Jeff.

While Jeff could have dashed off an angry, emotionally satisfying letter that took only a minute or two to write, he took the time to pen a thoughtful letter that was written with the judge’s thoughts, beliefs and goals in mind. It is that intelligent and disciplined activism that has the greatest chance of carrying the day.